What to do when an ESX host shows not responding?

Steps in order to progress

1) Login in the affected ESX server using Putty

2) service mgmt-vmware restart

If this doesn't work then the vmware-hostd daemon has to be killed.

3) ps -e | grep vmware-hostd
Look for the process_id associated with vmware-hostd

4) kill process_id
i.e. if 3) returned:
32470 ? 00:01:12 vmware-hostd
the command would be:
kill 32470

5) service mgmt-vmware status
if the service is started use
service mgmt-vmware restart
if it's stopped use:
service mgmt-vmware start